Monday, July 30, 2012

Dean's Dream to Dance

I am currently taking an online choreography class with Dean called "From Dream to Dance". This is with Judy Gamet through Dogs Can Dance.

It is very interesting to revisit Dean's Freestyle. It actually didn't occur to me until today, when I noticed that his laterals are rather weak, that he and I have simply not worked on Freestyle in quite a long time.

I do think it is because I have gotten much more focused on Tessa's dance training. After all, she is still learning so many of the basics, and she has such a natural desire to work with me in the ring. She has soared from never having stepped in the competition ring to being one leg away from her Novice title in less than 5 months! Dean's first leg of Beginner was earned in November of 2007. To this day he and I have never even attempted Novice.

I guess it is rather difficult to keep up with any kind of focused training when he and I really have no goals.

But somehow that seems to be changing, and I think Tessa's success has as much to do with that as it did with the fact that I neglected Dean's dancing to begin with. Tessa has shown me that all of the things that went so horribly wrong with Dean's dancing couldn't be helped any more than it can be helped that she has some natural quality that has made her successful.

And now Tessa and I can take over the goals that I originally had for Dean, and that leaves me free to take him where he can show off the best in himself.

Dean and I are now creating a routine that I hope to use for Advanced Classical Freestyle in the Dogs Can Dance Challenge. Speedy earned the Beginner points for our team, and hopefully he will earn them in Intermediate. If the routine that I submitted for the event in progress right now does not earn 100 points, Speedy and I will do the performance again to earn the rest of them.

But somehow it feels right to pass the baton on to Dean to work at the Advanced level. That has never been Speedy's thing, and I think Dean is going to do some beautiful work.

The class is going well. We got off to a bit of a rocky start with our first session at home when he became fixated on a mysterious scent coming from our air conditioner vents!! But today we practiced at the training building and he did much, much better!

Here is a sample of our work today. We were playing with bouncing moves off the sides of the ring. This is not a choreographed portion of the routine - just doodling. It will be very interesting to see what we develop this into!

I am very, very glad to be working on Freestyle with Dean again. I am very eager to have portions of the routine to train and rehearse! It won't be long now!